WINTER HAVEN | Customers of a recently closed shoe repair store are wondering why their belongings ended up in a trash bin when the store was evicted from its Dundee Road shopping center.

By RYAN E. LITTLELedger Media Group

WINTER HAVEN | Customers of a recently closed shoe repair store are wondering why their belongings ended up in a trash bin when the store was evicted from its Dundee Road shopping center.

Items left at the store to be repaired, like Louis Vuitton purses, Kenneth Cole Reaction wedge heels and worn men's dress shoes, ended up in a pile in two trash bins.

Many of the items were labeled with the customer's name and phone number.

Customers of the store, A-1 Shoe Repair, and the landlord, Gerald Burns, say the store's owner, Robert Pedrosa, is responsible.

Attempts to reach Pedrosa were unsuccessful.

Winter Haven resident Laura Lyons had done business with the store multiple times, she said, but hadn't heard about the Jan. 11 eviction.

"How is this possible? No phone call, no nothing," Lyons said.

"They always took long so I didn't worry about getting it. I figured they would call me when it was done, but I never heard anything from them."

The Louis Vuitton purse she left there was a gift from her mother and one of her most valued possessions. She said it is incomprehensible that it would be thrown in the trash.

But Lyons said she knows she's lucky compared to many customers who likely won't get their belongings back.

Neil Berger, of Jan Phyl Village, took two antique swords to the shoe repair shop about three months ago to have two leather scabbards made.

Berger, like many of the store's customers, was asked to pay in advance. He paid the store $107 but his possessions couldn't be found in the piles in the trash bins.

Now Berger doesn't have his scabbards, his swords or his money, and said he can't believe he's been ripped off by the store.

"I saw that he had done such good work for everyone else," Berger said.

The shoe repair store had been open in Winter Haven for at least 10 years, Burns said.

Burns said Pedrosa purchased the store from a prior owner about 18 months ago, but Burns couldn't recall that person's name.

The shoe repair store had never had problems paying its rent until Pedrosa bought the business, Burns said.

By the time Polk County Sheriff's deputies evicted the business Jan. 11, Burns said, Pedrosa owed him about $2,500.

"People are calling us and we can't help them and it makes us feel bad," said Rita Burns, Gerald Burns' wife.

Gerald Burns said he doesn't know how the customers' belongings ended up in the trash bins; he didn't put them there, he said.

"The next thing I knew the stuff was in the Dumpster," Gerald Burns said. "I don't know who did what."

But customers want answers.

"I don't see why they couldn't call and be like, ‘Well, I have your (purse) and the store's about to close down ... come and pick your items up," said Vatisha Richardson, whose black, checkered Louis Vuitton purse ended up in the trash bins after she dropped it off Jan. 4 — just a week before the eviction.